


Boxed In

by hunenka



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Apocalypseverse Michael Possessing Dean Winchester, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Post-Episode: s14e12 Prophet and Loss, Season/Series 14, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-05-31 06:20:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19420231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hunenka/pseuds/hunenka
Summary: The werewolves captured Dean, but it’s the archangel inside him they want. Now it’s up to him to keep Michael under lock and key.(Set after 14x12Prophet and Loss.)





	Boxed In

There are pros and cons to splitting up when working a case. One of the cons is that if you get jumped by a pack of Michael’s jacked-up werewolves, you have zero chance of beating them on your own. But one of the pros—one that outweighs any cons by far—is that since such a big group of superwolves is pretty much impossible to beat anyway, at least when they get you, they get _only_ you and your brother remains free and unharmed.

Or that’s the theory anyway. Though considering their special brand of Winchester bad luck, Dean wouldn’t bet much on it.

He’s canvasing a junkyard where several mauled bodies were found over the past month, fighting off an unexpected bout of Bobby-themed nostalgia and a headache caused by Michael’s non-stop tantrums, when the werewolves show up. Too many to count, let alone fight off, before they are on him. They swarm him like ants, pulling him down to the ground and keeping him pinned there. Dean can barely move a finger when they're done.

And then things get weird, because instead of ripping his heart out or at least delivering a cheesy evil monologue, they just stare at him expectantly.

Dean stares back.

For a few beats, nothing happens. It’s starting to get a little awkward. Finally one of them tentatively asks, “Michael?”

Well, shit.

“Nope, just me,” Dean says, and then there’s pressure on his windpipe and the world turns grey, then black. He loses consciousness to the sound of Michael banging on the door. His last thought is a prayer that the door will hold.

———

When Dean comes to, the headache that’s become his new normal since Michael got grounded in that backroom cooler in his mind is worse than usual; it’s like hot spikes being jammed into his brain right through his skull. But at least he’s still Dean, not a puppet in a douchey suit and a stupid newsboy cap.

He stifles a groan—he can hear someone else in the room, and he has no intention of drawing their attention, so he keeps his eyes closed and his body lax, relying on his remaining senses to get a feel of whatever dank, musty basement he’s stuck in.

Except the surface he’s lying on is neither cold nor wet. It's not even really hard; in fact, it feels soft against his cheek, nice and plush, and there’s no funky smell. And Dean’s pretty sure he can feel warm sunlight on his face, tickling his eyelids. So no musty basement after all. Huh. That’s not how things normally go.

The ropes around his wrists and ankles—now that’s closer to the usual ‘kidnapped by the bad guys’ experience. They’re tied tight, but not so much as to entirely cut off his circulation, so there’s that at least. And while Dean can’t feel any of the lockpicks and various blades he always carries on his body, he still has his clothes on, which is another small mercy. He’s learned not to take those lightly.

He lies still, thinking. There’s no telling how long he’s been out exactly, but since the sun is still up, it couldn’t have been more than a couple hours. After finishing up their respective parts of the investigation, Dean and Sam were supposed to meet at a diner downtown to discuss the case and grab a burger—the Sheriff back at the station had nothing but praise for the place.

But Dean’s not there, so Sam must be looking for him by now. He surely started at the scrapyard, and if he found any traces of a struggle, anything to help him figure out where Dean was taken, he’s following the trail like a hunting dog and soon he’ll be kicking down the doors to wherever it is they’ve taken Dean. Hopefully with some reinforcements, or he’ll probably end up knocked out and tied up too.

If Sam found nothing… well, then it might take him a while.

So waiting it is, at least for now.

———

Time drags on, because there’s not much Dean can do to keep himself occupied while faking unconsciousness. Aside from trying to ignore his growing fear—no reason not to admit it to himself—as he wonders why exactly these superwolves took him, and even worse, why they asked about Michael.

Though he really shouldn’t be that surprised; someone was bound to come looking for Michael, sooner rather than later. Dean just made it easier for them by basically walking right into it.

What was he even thinking, strutting around with a homicidal archangel in his head? He should've stayed holed up in the relative safety of the bunker, preferably in the dungeon, wearing those archangel cuffs 24/7. But he didn’t, because even at forty, he can't stand the sight of his little brother looking at him all sad-eyed, wordlessly begging him to make things okay.

And because the prospect of eternity in a box at the bottom of the ocean terrified Dean so much that he was willing to believe they'd somehow find another way. As if he could ever be strong enough to control an archangel bent on breaking free and destroying the world. It’s a miracle he’s managed it so far.

Speaking of which… it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep up the Sleeping Beauty act with Michael tirelessly banging on the inside of Dean’s skull with a sledgehammer. Every time Dean gets even remotely used to the intensity, Michael ramps it up, and Dean’s not sure how much longer he can take it in silence.

It turns out he won’t have to, because he can hear a door being opened, and several sets of footsteps approaching quickly. “Is he awake?”

Dean waits. He’d be holding his breath if that wasn't a dead giveaway.

“Yeah, he’s awake alright,” a different voice comes from where whoever was keeping Dean company is. “But he's doing his best not to look it, I gotta give him that.”

No point in keeping up the ruse anymore, Dean opens his eyes to take a good look at the asshole laughing at him. The guy is sprawled out on a huge, lush-looking orange sofa in the middle of a spacious living room.

The one at the door doesn’t look amused, though. “You were supposed to inform me once he woke up, Jerry.”

Jerry—and seriously, what a dumb name for a bad guy—is still chuckling to himself. “Sorry, boss. It was so funny, you should’ve seen it.”

“Let’s see how funny it is to you when Michael asks why you were wasting his time,” ‘Boss’ says darkly, and the smile instantly vanishes from Jerry’s face.

Dean would find the whole exchange quite entertaining if he wasn’t… well, here.

Jerry, ‘Boss’ and the four other werewolves who came in redirect their attention to Dean. ‘Boss’ walks over to him, crouching. He leans over, peeks at Dean from an uncomfortably close proximity, and then he fucking _sniffs_ him.

Dean’s first instinct is to headbutt him; the distance is perfect to get him right in the nose; the crunch and subsequent scream would be very satisfying. On the other hand, it wouldn’t break him free, it wouldn’t even hurt the werewolf that bad, it would certainly bring retaliation, and most importantly—Dean’s pretty sure risking head injuries is a bad idea in his current situation.

So he just glares.

The werewolf stares at him inquisitively, like he's waiting for something. Or, Dean realizes, for someone.

"Still just little old me," he says.

"Not for long," the werewolf replies with confidence. He's a scrawny-looking kid, doesn't seem older than eighteen, which of course doesn’t mean shit. "Michael said this might happen.” And wow, that’s kind of a compliment. Guess he didn’t think Dean was so ‘under control’ after all.

“He told us to hunt you down,” Teen Wolf continues, “and gave us instructions. So the way I see it, you have two options here. Either you let Michael out right now, nice and easy and painless. Or we make you let him out."

Dean doesn't grace that with an answer.

Teen Wolf's expression hardens. "Fine. Have it your way." He wraps his hand around the rope binding Dean's wrists together and stands up, lifting Dean off the ground with no visible effort, like he's a bag of groceries. "Painful it is, then." He strides across the living room, leaving Dean no option but to follow. With his feet tied, Dean is forced to make small awkward steps, nearly tripping a few times.

The other werewolves join them, and like some weird procession they walk through several rooms, including one with mauled corpses of two elderly people, probably the unfortunate owners of the house. Then through a dining room, kitchen, hallway, down the stairs where Dean stumbles and only avoids a faceplant thanks to Teen Wolf holding him. There’s another hallway and finally another door, and he's thrown to the floor of a gym.

The werewolves all file into the room behind him—Dean counts eleven of them—and the door is shut.

Dean sits up, gets his bound feet under him and stands up, looking around in search of escape routes. As expected, he finds none. It's a basement gym, the windows under the ceiling tiny, the door blocked.

The superwolves start closing in on him.

Taking a step back, Dean tries to avoid the inevitable, sidestepping a weight training bench and several other pieces of gym equipment.

One of the wolves starts to chuckle, several more join in.

Teen Wolf is the only one not laughing. "This isn't a game," he says. He’s a tough cookie, apparently. “We’re on a rescue mission here.” Easily crossing the distance between him and Dean, he grabs Dean by the wrists again, jerking him towards the centre of the room where a punching bag hangs from the ceiling. “Get it ready.”

One werewolf, a freakishly tall dude with dreadlocks who looks like a Jason Momoa wannabe, unfastens the punching bag, and Teen Wolf shoves Dean towards the chain left swinging from the ceiling. Dean drags his feet as much as he can, but it’s no use. They lift his arms up and fasten the rope tying his wrists to the sturdy bolt snap, and that’s it.

“Not bad,” Teen Wolf says, stepping back to take an appraising look.

Dean looks up, tugs at the chain, but of course nothing happens. The rope is strong and so is the bolt; he’s not going anywhere. At least he can stand with his feet firmly planted on the floor instead of just hanging there like a punching bag. Which he’s no doubt about to become anyway, hanging or not.

“Look, fellas, beating me up isn’t gonna get Michael back,” he tries to reason with them.

“I disagree,” Teen Wolf opposes, plopping down on the discarded punching bag. “The thing is, you’re keeping him locked up inside your mind. We’ll see how well that goes for you when all your mind is able to focus on is sheer agony.”

“That’s not gonna work,” Dean says, hopefully sounding more convinced than he actually is. The trouble is they don’t need him to sign an application form for the Evil League of Evil, all they need is for him to slip up for one second. And he'll be the first one to admit that pain is a powerful tool, no matter how much he hates the fact that it’s true. “I’m not letting him out.”

Teen Wolf smiles. It's Zuckerberg-level creepy. “We’ll see. Personally, I think soon you’ll be happy to let him take over just to make the pain go away.”

But if Dean did that, he’d be giving Michael free rein to inflict pain on countless others. He wants to say he’d never do something like that, except he already has done it, and far worse, down in the Pit. So he keeps his mouth shut and hopes he’ll be stronger this time. Or that Sam comes for him before push comes to shove. Where the hell is he anyway?

“Hey boss, we doing this or not?” A female werewolf in a pink tank top asks. She seems disturbingly eager to start.

Teen Wolf looks at Dean. “Last chance to take the easy way out.”

“I was just gonna say the same thing to you.”

“I heard you’re a funny guy.” Teen Wolf doesn’t smile. He beckons to Pink Tank Top, who is basically bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Go ahead, Ellie.”

“Thanks, boss.” Ellie smiles and sashays over to Dean. She puts her hands on his chest, slowly running them over his pecs in a way that makes his skin crawl. Her fingers brush his nipples, and her smirk tells him it’s intentional.

“Don’t touch me,” he snaps, baring his teeth and leaning as far away from her as possible. Bumping into another body right behind him.

“Ooh,” Ellie says, taking her hands off him and waving them dramatically. She looks at whoever is standing behind Dean, grinning. “Seems like mister Winchester would prefer a man’s touch? Guess you were right, Travis.”

“Lucky me then,” a male voice rumbles behind Dean, a gust of hot air tickling the back of his neck. Two large hands land on his hips.

“Get off!” Dean yells, but between Travis and Ellie, he’s got nowhere to go.

“Stop fooling around,” Teen Wolf cuts in. “Just get to it.”

“Gladly.” Travis walks around to stand next to Ellie. He’s about as tall as Dean, and oddly enough, looks like a hunter—boots, jeans, flannel and the general disheveled appearance. Maybe he used to be one before he was turned.

The two werewolves exchange a look and start to remove Dean’s clothes. Travis rips off Dean’s jacket and shirt while Ellie unzips his jeans, pulling them down to his ankles along with his boxers. She kneels, looks up at him with a suggestive smile, then opens her mouth wide, revealing a set of nasty fangs as she leans towards his crotch.

Everyone laughs as Dean instinctively jerks away.

“Ellie!” Teen Wolf barks, and the laughter instantly dies off.

She sighs, drawing back. “Alright, alright. You’re no fun, boss.”

“The sooner we help Michael break free, the bigger his reward. So get on with it, we don’t have all day.”

“Hey, there’s no rush—” Dean starts to say, and gets a mean punch to the gut for it, swaying back and forth with the blow before he finds his footing again. Michael roars inside his head, cranking up the volume yet again. Dean grits his teeth against it all; he just has to wait it out until Sam comes for him.

Ellie uses his momentary distractedness to unlace his boots, pulling them off along with everything else until Dean’s fully naked. She kicks his clothes off to the side and stands up, taking a few steps back. The rest of them join her, gawking at him like he’s a zoo exhibit. Except there’s no DO NOT TOUCH sign and even if there was, they’d do the opposite anyway.

“So _this_ is what a perfect vessel looks like? No way. I thought he’d look different,” Ellie scoffs, hands on her hips. “Taller, more buff or something, you know.”

“That would be his brother Sam,” the werewolf who watched Dean fake sleep interjects. “This one’s older and shorter.”

“Smaller too, I bet,” Ellie adds, casting a withering glance towards Dean’s crotch before giving him a smug smirk. Like he’s gonna feel inadequate because of what she says.

“I ran into this demon once,” another werewolf joins in, like they’re just having a chat over dinner or something. “He wouldn’t stop bragging about that one time he fucked Dean Winchester.”

"You mean the king of Hell?"

The werewolf rolls his eyes. "No, I’m not talking about Crowley, man! Everybody knows about his thing with Dean Winchester." And hey, what the hell? "It was some random demon, fresh out of Hell after Lucifer rose. Said the demon in charge of breaking Winchester was a possessive bastard, but sometimes when he was in a sharing mood, he'd hold these free-for-alls, let everyone have a go with his favorite pet."

Dean swallows, doing his best to keep his face impassive as the werewolves turn to study him with new interest. They don’t need to know that 'random demon fresh out of Hell', whoever he was, was telling the truth.

"I bet he'd be great," Travis says, contemplative. "I mean, look at that mouth alone."

A round of chuckles and lewd sounds and gestures ensues. Dean bares his teeth in a sneer. "Come closer and I'll give you a free trial." He snaps his teeth to make his meaning clear.

“Cool, I like ‘em feisty,” Travis, unfazed, steps up to take Dean’s chin in a firm, proprietary grip that just makes Dean angry. The blood in his temples thrums to the rhythm of Michael’s blows hitting the door. It’s getting worse. Again.

“Nobody here cares about your sexual preferences,” Teen Wolf intervenes again. “So stop fooling around and get to it already.”

“If he took a good pounding, it might shake him hard enough to let Michael out,” Travis grumbles, but lets go of Dean, stepping back.

“He _will_ take a good pounding,” Teen Wolf assures nobody in particular, “just not the one that gets you laid. Michael surely wouldn’t appreciate you sticking your dick into his chosen vessel.”

And Dean doesn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed; he doesn’t want to be raped by a bunch of werewolves, but he doesn’t particularly want them all orderly and focused on breaking Michael free either. What a fucked-up choice. Except the choice is not his to make, of course.

Teen Wolf pulls out a smartphone from his pocket, starts scrolling down. “Just… make him break,” he says without looking up. He’s clearly not interested in the process, only the result. “I assume you don’t have to worry about causing permanent damage, but just to be safe, don’t kill him.”

Dean’s pretty sure they actually _can’t_ kill him with Michael inside, but he’s not going to share that info with them; chances are they’d just go ahead and test the theory. He doesn’t think he’d be able to hold onto his extremely precarious—more so by the second—control over Michael through something that.

One of the werewolves brings up a big duffle bag and starts laying out its contents on the weight bench. The others step aside to give Dean a clear view of the items presented one by one.

And so Dean stands there, strung up and naked and completely defenseless, watching as they lay out various tools of torture he's all painfully familiar with, and he feels... good. Better than he has in a long time.

It takes him a moment before he realizes the reason: Michael's gone quiet.

No yelling, no banging, no rattling. Nothing but silence.

Dean takes a deep breath, lets the air fill his lungs, and just takes in the unexpected, blessed freedom of having his body to himself for the first time in weeks. It almost makes him light-headed, like he's floating, weightless.

It can't last, won't last, and he needs to savor it for however long he's got.

Teen Wolf looks up from his phone, eyebrows raised. “Well? I believe one of you called dibs on him?”

“On it,” Ellie says and without further ado picks up a knife, stepping up to Dean. "Any preference on where I should start, smaller Winchester?"

"How about your face?"

"I could carve up yours," she says, "but I don't want to miss the faces you’ll make as we break you. Somehow I just _know_ you’re pretty when you cry."

She positions the blade over his heart and makes the first cut, shallow but long, from his pec down to hip bone. It hurts, but it's nothing he can’t handle. Dean’s had worse.

He can do this.

Then she starts in on a second cut, parallel to the first, and that’s when Michael barrels into the door full force, the blast so unexpected and powerful that it hits Dean like a truck, throwing him completely off balance. He sways and Ellie’s knife hand slips, burying the blade deep into his side.

But Dean can barely hear his own screams over the sound of Michael’s booming voice, building up horrible, relentless pressure inside his head.

———

Something's wrong.

It wasn't supposed to get this bad so soon.

Dean should be handling this better, should be able to take much more of this before traitorous thoughts like _too much no more please stop make it stop_ start creeping up. He shouldn’t be that big of a wuss—if he managed thirty years in Hell before he broke, this should be nothing.

Except holding Michael back has been taking pretty much all he had even before this started. Right from the get-go, it was an uneven fight Dean was slowly but surely losing, no matter how much Sam, Cas and everyone else insisted otherwise. No matter how hard Dean wanted to believe them.

What’s happening now is just speeding up the inevitable.

They’re wearing him out fast, inside and out. The freakishly tall werewolf is currently pummeling him with fists that feel like they’re made of iron, bruising and cracking ribs and tearing things that shouldn’t be torn, and Michael is matching every blow of those fists with his own, beating against the door inside Dean’s mind tirelessly.

There's blood in sticky puddles under his feet, and his voice is hoarse from screaming. They've taken turns with him, using the tools from the bag one by one, and his body is one big throbbing open wound.

Except his face, which they’ve left alone because they all agreed he does look too pretty when he cries to mess it up. When they taunt him about it, he can't find the energy to spit something back at them, wrung dry.

He can't even hold his head up, but he tries desperately to stay on his feet so as not to put pressure on his torn wrists and the shoulder he dislocated when one of them decided to put a cattle prod between his legs.

“My turn now,” a new voice says. The tall werewolf is replaced by another, this one carrying a torch lighter. “Gotta stop the bleeding and cauterize the wounds, right?” The werewolf says with a smile, looking at the cuts all over Dean’s body, and it’s not long before the room fills with the stench of Dean’s burning flesh.

Turns out Dean had just enough energy left to thrash around and dislocate the other shoulder too.

———

"You can make it stop," they tell him over and over, and it hurts so bad Dean's having trouble remembering why that is a bad idea.

This is what pain does. It brings you to a point where you don't care about anything but making it stop, consequences be damned.

Dean can't get to that point or they're all screwed.

He needs to get out, get away, find that place where pain doesn't matter, where things happening to his body are not important because he's not there, he's not anywhere, just floating and distant, watching from afar. It’s safe here, in this place where he doesn't have a name and doesn't have a body—

The door shakes so hard it feels like lightning struck the building, hinges groaning, metal denting. Michael’s true voice comes from the other side, white-blue light seeping through the crack under the door that just keeps quaking more and more.

Dean snaps back to his body. It's _his_ and he’s not giving it up just so Michael can take over. Back at Rocky's Bar, he presses his back against the door and waits until the shaking and rattling eases, and with a frustrated roar, Michael finally backs off.

Dean slumps in his chains, exhausted. The headache has gotten to a point where it's now worse than the long, thick needles Ellie is systematically pushing into all the places in his body that hurt the most. He hasn’t even realized she and Torch Lighter Guy switched places.

But what's even worse is the realization that Dean can't run away. He can't go hide in that safe place where nothing hurts, because then he might as well open the door and lay down a red carpet for Michael, hand his body over.

He has to stay here, present for all of it.

No escape, no rest, and no end in sight.

———

“Just let him out and it will be over,” Teen Wolf cajoles, his voice almost gentle, like he actually cares, like he wants to help Dean. “Let him go.”

“No,” Dean wheezes weakly, just to remind himself what the right answer is.

“No?” Teen Wolf repeats, the patience disappearing from his voice instantly. “How about this then? I start counting down from ten, and when I get to one I’ll ask you again.” He stands on his tiptoes, reaches for Dean’s left hand, takes Dean’s little finger and slowly starts bending it backwards until the finger snaps. “Ten.”

“No.”

Ring finger. Snap. “Nine.”

Dean doesn’t say anything, but he can’t hold back the whimpers.

Middle finger. “Eight.” Index finger. “Seven.” Thumb. “Six.” A pause, then he reaches for Dean’s right hand, takes the little finger. “Five.”

As the countdown continues, Michael ramps up his onslaught on the door again, and by the time Teen Wolf gets to one, leaving all of Dean’s fingers a broken, mangled mess, Dean has nearly blacked out from the pain.

But he can’t, can’t check out now, so he hangs on by his disfigured fingertips and waits.

What the hell is taking Sam so long?

———

He’s being crushed between two millstones, that’s what if feels like. His body stripped down and flayed to the raw nerves, exposed for more pain, more abuse. His mind mashed to a pulp by Michael’s bottomless, unstoppable rage.

It all blends together, the pain, trapping him in the middle where he’s got nowhere to go, no way to escape or fight back.

All Dean can do is take it.

Take it until he can’t anymore.

———

A while passes before he notices they’ve stopped to take a break; they’re not inflicting any new pain, but there’s so much of it already that the change practically doesn’t register. What’s a few drops in an ocean?

Besides, Michael hasn’t stopped. He’s an earthquake that just won’t die down, tossing Dean around until he’s not sure which way is up. Disoriented, ears ringing, vision hazy, he tries to focus on what the werewolves are saying, but it’s like he’s underwater, only catching bits and pieces here and then.

He catches “not working” and “too slow”, and “Michael” and “promised”, words that hold no meaning or significance. And then he hears someone say "his brother" and "getting close", and those words snap Dean back to the present in an instant, his mind sharper as it emerges from the fog of pain.

Brother.

 _Sam_.

Is Sam getting closer to finding him? Dean doesn't want to believe it only to find out it was false hope, but it must be true—the werewolves immediately renew their onslaught on him with a ferocity that seems reckless, almost desperate.

They are running out of time.

But so is Dean.

Michael must sense it too because he goes from a violent storm to a hurricane, a continuous explosion of power that shakes Dean to the core and makes what's being done to his body peripheral, unimportant. His true voice is a sonic blast that has nowhere to go but echo in Dean’s head on an endless loop. If Dean's hands were free, he’d try to claw his ears out with his maimed fingers just to make it stop.

But Michael won’t stop, he smells blood in the water, he knows Dean can't take it for much longer, that he's at the end of his last reserves.

Every second feels like the last one before Dean breaks. But he has to—he _will_ —keep it together just for a little longer, until Sam comes. If he can just hold out until then, it will all be over.

Because then he’ll do what he should’ve done in the first place—he’s getting into that box and down to the bottom of the Pacific. He won’t let anyone talk him out of it this time, won’t take no more risks and make innocent people pay for his mistakes.

He can do this.

He can make it right, at last.


End file.
